Month: March 2017

I found this so interesting I could not help but repost it. It’s from a BBC site, and you can link to it using the various links in this piece. FD

16 March 2017

The 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” It wasn’t until 1934 that heterosexuality was graced with the meaning we’re familiar with today: “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality.”

Whenever I tell this to people, they respond with dramatic incredulity. That can’t be right! Well, it certainly doesn’t feel right. It feels as if heterosexuality has always “just been there.”

A few years ago, there began circulating a “man on the street” video, in which the creator asked people if they thought homosexuals were born with their sexual orientations. Responses were varied, with most saying something like, “It’s a combination of nature and nurture.” The interviewer then asked a follow-up question, which was crucial to the experiment: “When did you choose to be straight?” Most were taken back, confessing, rather sheepishly, never to have thought about it. Feeling that their prejudices had been exposed, they ended up swiftly conceding the videographer’s obvious point: gay people were born gay just like straight people were born straight.

The video’s takeaway seemed to suggest that all of our sexualities are “just there”; that we don’t need an explanation for homosexuality just as we don’t need one for heterosexuality. It seems not to have occurred to those who made the video, or the millions who shared it, that we actually need an explanation for both.

While heterosexual sex is clearly as old as humanity, the concept of heterosexuality as an identity is a very recent invention (Credit: Getty Images)

There’s been a lot of good work, both scholarly and popular, on the social construction of homosexual desire and identity. As a result, few would bat an eye when there’s talk of “the rise of the homosexual” – indeed, most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history. What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence.

There are many reasons for this educational omission, including religious bias and other types of homophobia. But the biggest reason we don’t interrogate heterosexuality’s origins is probably because it seems so, well, natural. Normal. No need to question something that’s “just there.”

But heterosexuality has not always “just been there.” And there’s no reason to imagine it will always be.

When heterosexuality was abnormal

The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality was invented usually involves an appeal to reproduction: it seems obvious that different-genital intercourse has existed for as long as humans have been around – indeed, we wouldn’t have survived this long without it. But this rebuttal assumes that heterosexuality is the same thing as reproductive intercourse. It isn’t.

“Sex has no history,” writes queer theorist David Halperin at the University of Michigan, because it’s “grounded in the functioning of the body.” Sexuality, on the other hand, precisely because it’s a “cultural production,” does have a history. In other words, while sex is something that appears hardwired into most species, the naming and categorising of those acts, and those who practise those acts, is a historical phenomenon, and can and should be studied as such.

Or put another way: there have always been sexual instincts throughout the animal world (sex). But at a specific point on in time, humans attached meaning to these instincts (sexuality). When humans talk about heterosexuality, we’re talking about the second thing.

Hanne Blank offers a helpful way into this discussion in her book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality with an analogy from natural history. In 2007, the International Institute for Species Exploration listed the fish Electrolux addisoni as one of the year’s “top 10 new species.” But of course, the species didn’t suddenly spring into existence 10 years ago – that’s just when it was discovered and scientifically named. As Blank concludes: “Written documentation of a particular kind, by an authority figure of a particular kind, was what turned Electrolux from a thing that just was … into a thing that was known.”

Oscar Wilde’s trial for ‘gross indecency’ is often considered a pivotal moment in the formation of the gay identity (Credit: Alamy)

Something remarkably similar happened with heterosexuals, who, at the end of the 19th Century, went from merely being there to being known. “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.

So what changed? Language.

In the late 1860s, Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny coined four terms to describe sexual experiences: heterosexual, homosexual, and two now forgotten terms to describe masturbation and bestiality; namely, monosexual and heterogenit. Kertbeny used the term “heterosexual” a decade later when he was asked to write a book chapter arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The editor, Gustav Jager, decided not to publish it, but he ended up using Kertbeny’s novel term in a book he later published in 1880.

The next time the word was published was in 1889, when Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing included the word in Psychopathia Sexualis, a catalogue of sexual disorders. But in almost 500 pages, the word “heterosexual” is used only 24 times, and isn’t even indexed. That’s because Krafft-Ebing is more interested in “contrary sexual instinct” (“perversions”) than “sexual instinct,” the latter being for him the “normal” sexual desire of humans.

“Normal” is a loaded word, of course, and it has been misused throughout history. Hierarchical ordering leading to slavery was at one time accepted as normal, as was a geocentric cosmology. It was only by questioning the foundations of the consensus view that “normal” phenomena were dethroned from their privileged positions.

The emphasis on procreation comes not primarily from Jewish or Christian Scriptures, but from Stoicism

For Krafft-Ebing, normal sexual desire was situated within a larger context of procreative utility, an idea that was in keeping with the dominant sexual theories of the West. In the Western world, long before sex acts were separated into the categories hetero/homo, there was a different ruling binary: procreative or non-procreative. The Bible, for instance, condemns homosexual intercourse for the same reason it condemns masturbation: because life-bearing seed is spilled in the act. While this ethic was largely taught, maintained, and enforced by the Catholic Church and later Christian offshoots, it’s important to note that the ethic comes not primarily from Jewish or Christian Scriptures, but from Stoicism.

As Catholic ethicist Margaret Farley points out, Stoics “held strong views on the power of the human will to regulate emotion and on the desirability of such regulation for the sake of inner peace”. Musonius Rufus, for example, argued in On Sexual Indulgence that individuals must protect themselves against self-indulgence, including sexual excess. To curb this sexual indulgence, notes theologian Todd Salzman, Rufus and other Stoics tried to situate it “in a larger context of human meaning” – arguing that sex could only be moral in the pursuit of procreation. Early Christian theologians took up this conjugal-reproductive ethic, and by the time of Augustine, reproductive sex was the only normal sex.

While Krafft-Ebing takes this procreative sexual ethic for granted, he does open it up in a major way. “In sexual love the real purpose of the instinct, the propagation of the species, does not enter into consciousness,” he writes.

In other words, sexual instinct contains something like a hard-wired reproductive aim – an aim that is present even if those engaged in ‘normal’ sex aren’t aware of it. Jonathan Ned Katz, in The Invention of Heterosexuality, notes the impact of Krafft-Ebing’s move. “Placing the reproductive aside in the unconscious, Krafft-Ebing created a small, obscure space in which a new pleasure norm began to grow.”

The importance of this shift – from reproductive instinct to erotic desire – can’t be overstated, as it’s crucial to modern notions of sexuality. When most people today think of heterosexuality, they might think of something like this: Billy understands from a very young age he is erotically attracted to girls. One day he focuses that erotic energy on Suzy, and he woos her. The pair fall in love, and give physical sexual expression to their erotic desire. And they live happily ever after.

It was only at the turn of the 20th Century that thinkers began to divorce sexual desire (depicted here in Rodin’s The Kiss) from reproduction (Credit: Alamy)

Without Krafft-Ebing’s work, this narrative might not have ever become thought of as “normal.” There is no mention, however implicit, of procreation. Defining normal sexual instinct according to erotic desire was a fundamental revolution in thinking about sex. Krafft-Ebing’s work laid the groundwork for the cultural shift that happened between the 1923 definition of heterosexuality as “morbid” and its 1934 definition as “normal.”

Sex and the city

Ideas and words are often products of their time. That is certainly true of heterosexuality, which was borne out of a time when American life was becoming more regularised. As Blank argues, the invention of heterosexuality corresponds with the rise of the middle class.

The invention of heterosexuality corresponds with the rise of the middle class

In the late 19th Century, populations in European and North American cities began to explode. By 1900, for example, New York City had 3.4 million residents – 56 times its population just a century earlier. As people moved to urban centres, they brought their sexual perversions – prostitution, same-sex eroticism – with them. Or so it seemed. “By comparison to rural towns and villages,” Blank writes, “the cities seemed like hotbeds of sexual misconduct and excess.” When city populations were smaller, says Blank, it was easier to control such behaviour, just as it was easier to control when it took place in smaller, rural areas where neighbourly familiarity was a norm. Small-town gossip can be a profound motivator.

Because the increasing public awareness of these sexual practices paralleled the influx of lower classes into cities, “urban sexual misconduct was typically, if inaccurately, blamed” on the working class and poor, says Blank. It was important for an emerging middle class to differentiate itself from such excess. The bourgeois family needed a way to protect its members “from aristocratic decadence on the one side and the horrors of the teeming city on the other”. This required “systematic, reproducible, universally applicable systems for social management that could be implemented on a large scale”.

In the past, these systems could be based on religion, but “the new secular state required secular justification for its laws,” says Blank. Enter sex experts like Krafft-Ebing, who wrote in the introduction to his first edition of Psychopathia that his work was designed “to reduce [humans] to their lawful conditions.” Indeed, continues the preface, the present study “exercises a beneficent influence upon legislation and jurisprudence”.

The anonymity of city life in the 19th Century was often blamed for freer – and more ‘immoral’ – sexual behaviour (Credit: Alamy)

Krafft-Ebing’s work chronicling sexual irregularity made it clear that the growing middle class could no longer treat deviation from normal (hetero) sexuality merely as sin, but as moral degeneracy – one of the worst labels a person could acquire. “Call a man a ‘cad’ and you’ve settled his social status,” wrote Williams James in 1895. “Call him a ‘degenerate’ and you’ve grouped him with the most loathsome specimens of the human race.” As Blank points out, sexual degeneracy became a yardstick to determine a person’s measure.

Degeneracy, after all, was the reverse process of social Darwinism. If procreative sex was critical to the continuous evolution of the species, deviating from that norm was a threat to the entire social fabric. Luckily, such deviation could be reversed, if it was caught early enough, thought the experts.

The formation of “sexual inversion” occurred, for Krafft-Ebing, through several stages, and was curable in the first. Through his work, writes Ralph M Leck, author of Vita Sexualis, “Krafft-Ebing sent out a clarion call against degeneracy and perversion. All civic-minded people must take their turn on the social watch tower.” And this was certainly a question of civics: most colonial personnel came from the middle class, which was large and growing.

Though some non-professionals were familiar with Krafft-Ebing’s work, it was Freud who gave the public scientific ways to think about sexuality. While it’s difficult to reduce the doctor’s theories to a few sentences, his most enduring legacy is his psychosexual theory of development, which held that children develop their own sexualities via an elaborate psychological parental dance.

For Freud, heterosexuals weren’t born this way, but made this way. As Katz points out, heterosexuality for Freud was an achievement; those who attained it successfully navigated their childhood development without being thrown off the straight and narrow.

And yet, as Katz notes, it takes an enormous imagination to frame this navigation in terms of normality:

According to Freud, the normal road to heterosexual normality is paved with the incestuous lust of boy and girl for parent of the other sex, with boy’s and girl’s desire to murder their same-sex parent-rival, and their wish to exterminate any little sibling-rivals. The road to heterosexuality is paved with blood-lusts… The invention of the heterosexual, in Freud’s vision, is a deeply disturbed production.

That such an Oedipal vision endured for so long as the explanation for normal sexuality is “one more grand irony of heterosexual history,” he says.

Alfred Kinsey (centre) may have relaxed the taboo around sex, but his reports reaffirmed the existing categories of homosexual and heterosexual behaviour (Credit: Getty Images)

Still, Freud’s explanation seemed to satisfy the majority of the public, who, continuing their obsession with standardising every aspect of life, happily accepted the new science of normal. Such attitudes found further scientific justification in the work of Alfred Kinsey, whose landmark 1948 study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male sought to rate the sexuality of men on a scale of zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual). His findings led him to conclude that a large, if not majority, “portion of the male population has at least some homosexual experience between adolescence and old age”. While Kinsey’s study did open up the categories homo/hetero to allow for a certain sexual continuum, it also “emphatically reaffirmed the idea of a sexuality divided between” the two poles, as Katz notes.

The future of heterosexuality

And those categories have lingered to this day. “No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different,” wrote Wendell Ricketts, author of the 1984 study Biological Research on Homosexuality. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: “heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.”

Though the hetero/homo divide seems like an eternal, indestructible fact of nature, it simply isn’t. It’s merely one recent grammar humans have invented to talk about what sex means to us.

Heterosexuality, argues Katz, “is invented within discourse as that which is outside discourse. It’s manufactured in a particular discourse as that which is universal… as that which is outside time.” That is, it’s a construction, but it pretends it isn’t. As any French philosopher or child with a Lego set will tell you, anything that’s been constructed can be deconstructed, as well. If heterosexuality didn’t exist in the past, then it doesn’t need to exist in the future.

I was recently caught off guard by Jane Ward, author of Not Gay, who, during an interview for a piece I wrote on sexual orientation, asked me to think about the future of sexuality. “What would it mean to think about people’s capacity to cultivate their own sexual desires, in the same way we might cultivate a taste for food?” Though some might be wary of allowing for the possibility of sexual fluidity, it’s important to realise that various Born This Way arguments aren’t accepted by the most recent science. Researchers aren’t sure what “causes” homosexuality, and they certainly reject any theories that posit a simple origin, such as a “gay gene.” It’s my opinion that sexual desires, like all our desires, shift and re-orient throughout our lives, and that as they do, they often suggest to us new identities. If this is true, then Ward’s suggestion that we can cultivate sexual preferences seems fitting. (For more of the scientific evidence behind this argument, read BBC Future’s ‘I am gay – but I wasn’t born this way’.)

Beyond Ward’s question is a subtle challenge: If we’re uncomfortable with considering whether and how much power we have over our sexualities, why might that be? Similarly, why might we be uncomfortable with challenging the belief that homosexuality, and by extension heterosexuality, are eternal truths of nature?

The writer James Baldwin balked at defining people as straight or gay, arguing that “it answers a false argument, a false accusation” (Credit: Alamy)

In an interview with the journalist Richard Goldstein, the novelist and playwright James Baldwin admitted to having good and bad fantasies of the future. One of the good ones was that “No one will have to call themselves gay,” a term Baldwin admits to having no patience for. “It answers a false argument, a false accusation.”

Which is what?

“Which is that you have no right to be here, that you have to prove your right to be here. I’m saying I have nothing to prove. The world also belongs to me.”

Fewer than half British 18-24 year-olds identify as being 100% heterosexual

Once upon a time, heterosexuality was necessary because modern humans needed to prove who they were and why they were, and they needed to defend their right to be where they were. As time wears on, though, that label seems to actually limit the myriad ways we humans understand our desires and loves and fears. Perhaps that is one reason a recent UK poll found that fewer than half of those aged 18-24 identify as “100% heterosexual.” That isn’t to suggest a majority of those young respondents regularly practise bisexuality or homosexuality; rather it shows that they don’t seem to have the same need for the word “heterosexual” as their 20th-Century forebears.

Debates about sexual orientation have tended to focus on a badly defined concept of “nature.” Because different sex intercourse generally results in the propagation of the species, we award it a special moral status. But “nature” doesn’t reveal to us our moral obligations – we are responsible for determining those, even when we aren’t aware we’re doing so. To leap from an observation of how nature is to a prescription of nature ought to be is, as philosopher David Hume noted, to commit a logical fallacy.

As gay rights are increasingly recognised, many people also describe their sexual desires as lying on a spectrum (Credit: Alamy)

Why judge what is natural and ethical to a human being by his or her animal nature? Many of the things human beings value, such as medicine and art, are egregiously unnatural. At the same time, humans detest many things that actually are eminently natural, like disease and death. If we consider some naturally occurring phenomena ethical and others unethical, that means our minds (the things looking) are determining what to make of nature (the things being looked at). Nature doesn’t exist somewhere “out there,” independently of us – we’re always already interpreting it from the inside.

Until this point in our Earth’s history, the human species has been furthered by different-sex reproductive intercourse. About a century ago, we attached specific meanings to this kind of intercourse, partly because we wanted to encourage it. But our world is very different now than what it was. Technologies like preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are only improving. In 2013, more than 63,000 babies were conceived via IVF. In fact, more than five million children have been born through assisted reproductive technologies. Granted, this number still keeps such reproduction in the slim minority, but all technological advances start out with the numbers against them.

Socially, too, heterosexuality is losing its “high ground,” as it were. If there was a time when homosexual indiscretions were the scandals du jour, we’ve since moved on to another world, one riddled with the heterosexual affairs of politicians and celebrities, complete with pictures, text messages, and more than a few video tapes. Popular culture is replete with images of dysfunctional straight relationships and marriages. Further, between 1960 and 1980, Katz notes, the divorce rate rose 90%. And while it’s dropped considerably over the past three decades, it hasn’t recovered so much that anyone can claim “relationship instability” is something exclusive to homosexuality, as Katz shrewdly notes.

The line between heterosexuality and homosexuality isn’t just blurry, as some take Kinsey’s research to imply – it’s an invention, a myth, and an outdated one. Men and women will continue to have different-genital sex with each other until the human species is no more. But heterosexuality – as a social marker, as a way of life, as an identity – may well die out long before then.

—

Brandon Ambrosino has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Politico, Economist, and other publications. He lives in Delaware, and is a graduate student in theology at Villanova University.

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You won’t believe what happened to me on the way home the other night. Now I can’t even go to the local Whole Foods store! I’ve just got back from a great break in PV, Mexico. So, I arrived home and there’s no milk in the fridge.

Julie, has been looking after Hannibal, my dachshund, and I knew he wanted a walk with me, so I took him along with me to the store. It was pretty late, and some of the staff were taking in the flower display from the street, where they always look so lovely.

As I was looking at them, and thinking how fresh they were, and how they’d freshen up my apartment, I thought I might buy some. I turned my head at that moment to see Hannibal, my dachshund, peeing on the homeless guy who sometimes sits there.

He looked back, mortified, his legs wet, and a pool of pee spreading over his cardboard sign, which said – ‘I’ll accept anything.’

It’s absurd, but I couldn’t help thinking that was a rather open offer. I said I was sorry, reaching in my purse, and found all I had was plastic, and a few peso coins. He wouldn’t take the plastic, and the pesos were no good to him.

I ended up making my apologies and leaving, hurrying inside the store. I felt awkward, though probably a little better than he did. I must say it was a silly and embarrassing incident, but there it should have rested.

However, fate was not going to be so kind. The following day I had some friends arrive to stay. They are Ukrainian and the wife, bless her, decided I should have borscht for my lunch and cooked some up.

This was clearly well intentioned, but not my favorite form of soup. I’m more of a clam chowder person.

Either way, I dutifully took the borscht she’d made with me to the agency, when I left for work. It turned out we had a business lunch that day, and I didn’t get to eat her soup, which I am sure would have been delightful. Instead it remained in my bag, until I noticed it there on my way home. Thinking I would be a little devious, I decided to toss it out of the car window, and say to my guests how wonderful the soup was, and how grateful I was that she made it.

So, there in the very slow moving traffic I lowered my car window, and was about to pour it into the street, when the traffic came to a complete halt, and I found myself next to a particularly angry looking biker. I gave him a smile, but bikers and crossdressers don’t always mix well.

He looked back with disdain. I though I’d better not de-borscht myself in front of him. I gave him a cheeky smile and a week, and he scowled back at me. I lowered the passenger side window and tossed the borscht from it’s tupperware container.

That was when I heard a shout. It seemed to come from beside the car. I leaned over to the passenger side of the car and looked out on the ground, and there at the foot of a parking meter was the homeless guy, covered in borscht.

He’d moved a few blocks down the street, but it was definitely him. He turned his borscht covered head in my direction and then recognized me, and said ‘You!”. As the traffic moved on he scrambled to his feet, and started chasing after me in the slow-moving traffic. He was bundled up, but hurried along very quickly after me. It was just a little frightening.

I raised the window, but it was quite surprising how quickly this poor fellow could move, sprinting beside the car and banging on the window. All the while he was shouting and making a terrible fuss. Only when I caught the lights just right could I accelerate away fast enough to leave the fellow, with his flapping arms and wailing. I felt terrible for him, of course, but what could I do?

I pressed my patent leather clad high heeled right foot down and left the poor chap in the rear view mirror. In a face-off between the V8 in my Buick and a homeless person, the Buick generally wins.

I puzzled over his turn of speed for a while till I got home. He really was very quick for a homeless guy. Now, those of you who know me know that I am a kindly soul. Of course, I have my peccadillos, but I am generally a simple type. I feel no malice or unkindness to homeless people.

I was thinking this as I walked round my vehicle checking that it hadn’t been damaged by his banging on the window. That was when I noticed the glove caught on the door handle.

No wonder he’d been shouting so loudly as I accelerated away.

Oh, well. What can you do? I hope you’ve enjoyed this little story from the world of FionaDobson. Http://fionadobson.com

Don’t forget, I’ve got many free videos for you on Youtube, and soundfiles on Soundcloud.

I had a lovely email from Gunnar, from Iceland, yesterday. He had listened to one of my Youtube videos about ideantity and the importance of having a gurl name.

“I love your youtube videos. In one about female identity you say that its important to have a girl name for my girly side. I have always had problems coming up with a name that sticks. I ask you thus for help to find a girl name for me. “

Asking a girlfriend or emailing me for a suggestion, and telling me a little about yourself, is a good idea if you’re stuggling with this. Identity is a very importaant part of crossdressing. For many people the idea of dressing is a means to step into an alternative identity. A huge part of that is thinking what name reflects that identity. Is she a gurly girl, a tomboy, or perhaps a very professional individual.

One great way to select a name is to type into Google, favorite baby names of (insert your year of birth). The result will list the top few male and female names. Choose one of the top five. In many instances this will feel just right.

A name like ‘Candy’ may not suit that identity if it’s a person that is most at home in a Channel suit. Equally, ‘Olive’ or ‘Maud’ doesn’t much sound like a slutty vamp. Half the fun of dressing is creating the backstory of this character. If you want a fun exercise sit down one night and write her Resume, as though she were applying for a job. As you develop the character you’ll find your ideas of who she really is clarify. There’s a reason why we say ‘Accept yourself as you are – create yourself as you wish.”

As you explore the idea of alternative identity, you may want to think about the various aspects of who ‘she’ really is. Is she playful, or studious? Does she take life seriously, or live on the wild side? Eventually you’ll realise that crossdressing permeates every aspect of who you really are.

My aunt Pearl always used to say that you don’t win the lottery unless you buy a ticket. I remember the words echoing in my ears as they carted her off to rehab yet again, for her gambling addiction.

She was not only a serial gambler, but also a serial trophy wife. Her habit allowed her to work her way through the fortunes of six husbands, some of whom died in what can only be described as mysterious circumstances. Fortunately the standards of police investigation in Northern Rhodesia at the time were not quite up to the standards of CSI tv shows today. One went riding on his ranch, and was never seen again. Another choked to death in a tragic sausage eating competition (no surprises there), and another had a mysterious heart attack while taking his daily exercise. No one would think playing bowls could be so strenuous.

Needless to say, Aunt Pearl died a very wealthy woman. When asked where her wealth had come from she would often reply that one of her husbands had been involved in the ‘underground’ doing secret work during the war in London. This seemed very cryptic, and it’s certainly true that she did generally marry older men, much more frail than herself. One had indeed been in London during the war, though he worked on The Underground, driving a train. It was he who won the lottery and was the basis of her fortune.

You doubtless wonder why I am sharing these intimate details. Well, I am still sunning myself on the beach here in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. A flat tummy is good, as far as it goes. A bronzed one is even better. I’ve been getting some help from Juan the masseur, who has helped in so many ways. He’s rubbed all manner of things on my body to improve my tone.

My presence here is due in part to my cashing in a few stocks and investments. I always make a point to have a small portfolio of shares; as Aunt Pearl said, ‘you don’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket’, after all. I am not suggesting you take investment advice from a crossdressing femme like me, but this market feels right for an adjustment. I can’t help thinking it’s about to slide for a while. Best revisit those precious metal stocks. They look a lot more secure than most right now.

So, I cleared a few positions and slid down to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Juan is doing a masterful job of keeping things up with much more certainty than the current market.

I have been learning some useful Spanish phrases, which I will list for you at the foot of this message. Juan is very talented, a master of tongues. He said to me just the other day that he envied my good luck on the market.

“If I stand close to you, perhaps some of that good luck will rub off on me!” He said with a laugh.

I smiled at him, looking at the rather obvious bulge in his speedo, and replied that if he stood much closer it would be more than just my good luck that would rub off on him.

Have a wonderful week, and remember – “Accept yourself as you are, and create yourself as you wish.”

Tonight I would like to introduce you to a wonderful hypnosis video I have just finished working on. Now, I know what you are going to say. Just like Sebastian, my personal trainer – who incidentally has been hard at it these last few days working up a sweat – you’re probably thinking, “Fiona, you give and give! You are so good to your members!”

I feel it my destiny to work as hard as I can to satisfy every member that comes my way. Now, I know you think that’s hard to swallow, but I always do my best to allow my members needs to penetrate me to the very core! Even when I am spread very thin, I do my best to come up with something interesting for you.

Crossdressing Hypnosis – You Want To Be A Girl.

So, have a listen and enjoy this one on me. And speaking of enjoying it on me, I am in Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico for a week. I’ve been bronzing myself on the beach for a couple of days, and there’s a young man heading my way this very minute wanting to give me a massage. He tells me he has a friend, Juan, who can lend a hand, too! I have a sneaking suspicion these two are not members of the American Massage Therapists Association.

I suspect their massage would end in an abrupt and explosive way. That reminds me, I must rub a little more of this sun lotion on my breasts – they’re glowing with health already. I wouldn’t want to burn myself.

If you are a regular user of my website you’ll be aware that I have changed the look in the last few days. There’s a reason for this. I found to my surprise I was hacked. It was just the website, and they messed up a few menus and posts, but nothing more. All my member details are kept behind a very secure AES 256 bit encryption system. Anyone wanting to break into that should set aside approximately 40 billion years to run through the possible combinations. Given that the universe is only 15 billion years old, this seems to be good enough.

The result is that the website is now stronger, tighter, more highly lubricated and will even still respect you in the morning following use. We’ve still got one or two things to work on in there, but you’ll find most of the content is still there. Take a look at http://FionaDobson.com – If you’re as excited as Max was about it, you’ll need a towel.

Have a wonderful week.

If you are not a full member think about signing up – http://genr8tor.com/membership/ . When I see payment go through I will start you on your path. I work though everyone’s messages a couple of times a day and work to get you moving quickly. I know you’ll love it. Email me to let me know you’ve upgraded.

As I started work on this today I was surprised to find my neighbors son, Max, at my back door. He was standing their holding an enormous tool in his hand. It quite took my breath away!

I said to him, “There’s no way you’re coming inside with that!”

He was, however quite insistent. I explained to him that if he had to go about waving that enormous thing of his, he should try seeing it was properly lubricated and prepared. Finding some oil I took it in my hands and worked the lubricant into it.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think Max had experienced someone doing this to him. A crossdressing gurl just taking control like that. I guess he may have felt a little over excited. who can tell? Life is full of these unanswered quesions. Like why my friends always use my rear entrance, and not the front door.

Max seemed to enjoy the attention, and I knew he was excited to get inside. As I worked the lubricant deeper and deeper, and stroked his tool I could see he was becoming more agitated. These young boys are so easily overwhelmed. It’s so important to maintain eye contact, when someone is getting near the peak of their anticipation, don’t you think? I gave him the can of oil and left him to it.

I turned my back on him, and said I had to get an email off to my friends, and the sight of me walking away from him was simply too much. I think he took one look at my bum in my tight leggings and was squirting his fluid everywhere! What a mess. Anyway, I have to get on with this email! When I first asked him to help me with some repairs and chores this was not what I had in mind.

But that’s not the main reason I’m writing to you today. I thought it might be nice to focus on two things in this email. The first will be moisturizing and the second foundation. These are two essentials for anyone wishing to feminize their skin a little. Mositsturizing takes care of the tone of the skin, while foundation looks after color.

Regardless of age, male skin is often left untreated and dry because we are taught from an early age to wash, often using harsh soaps and no further treatment is really encouraged. What I’d like to encourage here is the regular use of a moisturizing lotion around the eyes and the sides of the mouth and nose area..

In your on going quest to feminize, this can be quite enjoyable. Those who have been following me a while will know I am a fan of gentle and subtle change. To start moisturizing every day, following a shave and brushing your teeth, is an almost undetectable but enjoyable process. You will soon find yourself feeling more feminine and your skin quality improving. Likely no-one but you will notice, but you will feel a little more feminine with this simple start to the day.

Now, as far as foundation goes, this is possibly something you don’t want to put on everyday as it is likely to be noticed. Although later, as you become a little more proficient at bringing subtle changes into you life, you may want to start using a little foundation each day, at first it is something that you can start practicing in private at home.

Doing self portrats? Foundation takes away the shiny reflections of your skin in photos. Yes, if you are into taking selfies when you dress, you need to know about foundation! To some degree you can achieve the same effect with a little talcum powder, but too much and you look very pale. Rather as though you’d walked in on Max playing with his tool, actually.

You can buy foundation at virtually any drug store. If you have to, asking the assistant to help you, ‘for your wife’, you’ll find they jump right in. Now, while the safest thing to do is go for a general mid tone foundation, at least to start, if you do need to choose a particular color here’s a helpful tool that will get you started: http://www.temptalia.com/foundation-matrix/scratch First choose an undertone, and then your skin tone, and it will list a range of the most available foundation types, along with prices etc..

Next time you decide to take a few selfies be sure to put on a little foundation first. It will make all the difference! For a great tutorial about how to apply foundation, try this Youtube video: https://youtu.be/TyeMrEYcMoQ

If you are not a full member think about signing up – http://genr8tor.com/membership/ . When I see payment go through I will start you on your path. I work though everyone’s messages a couple of times a day and work to get you moving quickly. I know you’ll love it. Email me to let me know you’ve upgraded.

🙂

Fiona.

Looking back to the early 1990’s, this video looks a bit different today.

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I came out to my sister in-law and my wife.

Today I came out to my sister in-law and my wife. I played dress up with her and I feel so freaking pretty its unreal! This journey is amazing. I will let u no how wonderful my night ends!

OMG!

I just read your story Clothes Maketh The Man up until part 8 and I was in borderline shock how fast my heart was racing...you really have a way with words!

Hilarious!

Fiona,
You are hilarious... Thank you for the sunshine in my Friday
Georgie x

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